For the first one, I cut out little kidney bean shaped jelly beans from construction paper. For the second, we used real jelly beans, which are usually pretty easy to find year round. I tried to stick with the colors that come in most packages.

Well, now that the school year is starting again, I am reminded that I never posted about the Teacher Thank You tags that I made for my kids’ teachers at the end of the last school year.

Better late than never, amiright?

Anyway, I printed these up so that we could make some letter-shaped sugar cookies for their teachers and put them in little baggies. This way the teachers would get a gift the girls made themselves and one that wouldn’t take up a bunch of space somewhere.

These tags obviously work best for teachers in preschool or kindergarten, but I think they would be pretty cute to give to a high school teacher too….. or is that just me??

Plus, I left a spot for your kids to sign the tags. And that photo at the top of the post? That scribble is actually how my 3yo was signing her name at the time. I just wrote out her name on the back so that the teacher could remember who it was from.

All you have to do is print out the tags, punch a hole in them, and tie them to whatever gift you’re giving.

I picked up these snack baggies at Target and the string at the dollar store.

We made A B C cookies to match the tags.

Well, actually, we made A, B, C, D, and then the first letters of both of my girls’ names.

Cream together the butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg, sour cream, and extract until smooth. In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder, then slowly mix into the wet ingredients until just combined. Do not over mix. Separate the dough in half and roll each piece out between two sheets of waxed paper to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. Refrigerate dough for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Remove dough from refrigerator and cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters. Gently gather scraps and reroll on a floured surface. Place cookies an inch apart on parchment lined cookie sheets and bake for 9 to 11 minutes. Do not over bake! Take them out when they appear just about to be done, and before they brown. Let cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Mix all of the icing ingredients together with a fork. Start with 3 tablespoons of water and add more, about a 1/2 teaspoon at a time, until you reach a consistency where a thick line of icing slowly and smoothly drips off of the fork when lifted from the bowl. Dye it your desired color, dividing it between separate bowls first if using multiple colors.

Dip the tops of the completely cooled cookies into the icing. Gently pull out the cookie and use a fork or skewer to scrape off excess icing without touching the cookie itself. Set cookie on top of a wire rack that’s positioned over waxed paper or foil and allow to harden completely, letting the cookies sit for at least an hour. Store covered.

This F is for Flamingo paper craft is really one of my favorite letters.

It must be a Floridian thing. I have a special place in my heart for flamingos. :)

Anyway, to make this, I cut out a lowercase F ahead of time and some feet, wings, and a beak, then gave my daughter those pieces and a googly eye and let her assemble the bird.

I also cut out that cute itty bitty flamingo in the bottom corner. Just ’cause.

For our letter sorting activity, I cut out two fish and cut out the letters on light blue paper in the shape of circles to represent bubbles.

These flower fingers were inspired by a similar idea I found in a craft book dating from my childhood.

What I did was cut out some green paper to resemble the shape of uppercase T. That “top” of the letter T would get wrapped around our fingers and the rest would function as the flower’s stem.

I also cut out some flower and leaf shapes, and we glued them all together to form our flowers. Then, after letting the glue dry for a few minutes, we taped that “top” part of the T that I mentioned into a circle so that we could slide that part over our fingers.

Of course, the flower petal part of our finger puppets were a little heavy. They drooped a bit, but, really, the girls didn’t mind. It was still a lot of fun for them. To fix that particular problem, though, you could use thicker paper (card stock instead of construction paper) or add a Popsicle stick or something for support.

Now, this F is for Footprints project was a really, really huge hit.

And super simple.

One of my favorite combinations. :)

To make the paint for the footprints, you simply combine 1/2 cup cornstarch with a 1/2 cup of water, and mix it together with a fork. Then drop in a bit of food coloring.

{If you’re using a nonstick pan to make the paint, be sure to mix it with a plastic fork.}

I made two colors in two cake pans, because the cake pan was big enough to hold my kids’ feet. But they were both pretty young the first time we did this – so be sure to check your pan/bowl against your kid’s feet.

Anyway: throw the cornstarch paint container out onto a driveway or sidewalk or deck, let the kids step in the paint and then trek colorful footprints everywhere.

And to really highlight the letter of the day, I made an outline of a giant F on the driveway with painters tape. The girls had fun filling the F with messy footprints.

Oh: and you may need to stir the paint occasionally. That’s why you see my daughter carrying around forks in the photo. The paint IS – technically – edible. But I wouldn’t suggest testing out the taste. Ick!

Okay, okay … this was kind of cheating.

We had some foam frames and foam stickers left over from a birthday party craft … so I just let the girls go ahead and make another frame apiece.

I guess you could get really into the alphabet thing and just stick letter Fs all over the frame, but we kinda just added this into our activities as a fun little project, putting their names at the bottom of the frame and going to town with the flower, animal, and instrument stickers over the rest.

Another option, however, would be to just use the foam flower stickers. Which would also look nice.

This worksheet was really fun for them.

I picked up some feathers at my local dollar store, but they were kind of long. Longer than the letter F if you laid them horizontally on the paper. So I cut them into pieces for this project.

That may have something to do with my OCD, though. You could also just use 3 feathers to make an F.

This is one of the free printable worksheets I made, which you can download at Letter F: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids. If you have feather stickers or a stamp, you could use that instead, but I find that the texture of the craft feathers is part of what made it really interesting.

As you may have noticed, we live in Florida.

So, coloring Florida’s Flag was a natural for Letter F Day. But you could also do Finland, Fiji, and/or France instead, if you preferred.

Our Sound Box was inspired by the “Sound Box” books the series by Jane Belk Moncure. They’re kind of hard to find now, so I’m glad I picked up a couple when I did years ago, although you can still sometimes find them on Amazon:

F is for Food :)

We used the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Honey Whole Wheat Bread. You COULD get it on Amazon, which is what I linked to, but it’s kinda seriously pricey, so I suggest checking your local stores first. I only include the link because it helps me to visualize what I’m looking for if I can see it first.

This was a simple lunch. I warmed up some frankfurters {turkey dogs count!}, sliced them into three pieces, and formed an F with the pieces on the plate.

Then I added some fruit. A mixture of fruit would have been nice, but the only fresh fruit we had that day was watermelon, so that’s what we ate.

Since we did so many activities for Letter F Day, dinner was also {like lunch} simple.

I threw some frozen french fries and frozen fish sticks on a cookie sheet and baked them up while I made a salad. {A “fresh” salad??}

Anyway, this particular meal is always a hit with my kids, but before we ate it, I made sure to make a game out of searching for all of the letter Fs on the boxes of the fries and fish sticks.

This was a pretty dessert, but also super, super sweet.

Why is it called “Fairy Fudge?” Well, I named it for Fairy Bread, which is a slice of white bread covered with butter and colorful sprinkles. But what we did here was make white chocolate fudge and cover IT with colorful nonpareil sprinkles. My kids LOVE sprinkles.

The fudge pictured above was from a rather unsuccessful recipe {waaaay to sweet and not the right texture at all}, but I’ve come up with my own recipe for Vanilla Fairy Fudge which is SO much better!

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